Films & Other Videos

Films with: Atkins, Charles E.

Surveys America's increasingly pluralistic spiritual landscape via The Pluralism Project at Harvard University; the Interfaith Center at the Presidio; Inter-Faith Ministries, in Wichita; and the United Religions Initiative, in San Francisco.

Facing unprecedented challenges on a global level, many people think we're passing through a major transitional phase in human history. They contend that the basic images guiding our lives must change in order for us to successfully deal with these challenges.

A noted scholar of world religions, Huston Smith experienced a profound change in worldview when he read The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley. The Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr notes that the "philosophia perennis" lies at the heart of all religious traditions.

In bringing together proponents of science and spirituality, this program proposes to encourage the overlapping of these contrasting worldviews in a revolutionary union of wisdom and, by joining strength to strength, facilitate the salvation of the Earth as humankind stands at the brink of global environmental catastrophe.

The prevailing monotheistic religions have been dominated by a top-down approach based upon a paternalistic model. This model is being called into question by some who assert that human beings must step forward to accept greater responsibility for our actions while becoming more attuned to transpersonal creative energies.